


The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

by CynaraM



Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fuck Or Die, Gen, Humor, Humour, Locked In, Mild Sexual Content, Parody, Sex Pollen, Sharing a Bed, Shorts, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, slash parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-01
Updated: 2016-03-01
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:49:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6137156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leonie & Cabal versus... <i>the attack of the slash tropes!</i>  Can they survive an onslaught of alien sex pollen, soul marks, and being locked in the shipping container of love?  What will happen in this collection of shorts?  Probably not sex; just look at the rating.  </p><p>I parody with love.  God knows I've used most of these tropes in my writing, and I will use them (and others) in the future.</p><div class="center">
  <p><br/><br/>For All_I_Need, who asked to read the first one, if I wrote it.  </p>
</div><br/>
            </blockquote>





	The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
>  Noto Bene: this is not in continuity with my _Friendship is Unnecessary_ series. Well, maybe the last one is.  
> 

"It's vegetal,' said Cabal, adjusting the focus. “Microgametophytes, if I had to guess."

“Micro-pardon?"

He gave her a look that almost audibly said ‘ _barbarian_.' “Pollen. But the sporopollenin layer is unlike anything I’ve seen."

"Do you look at much pollen, Cabal?"

A summer breeze wafted around the attic laboratory. The sun shone on the slate tiles of the roof and imparted a lazy, honeyed warmth to the space below. A space suffused with the mysterious grains they had captured and put under the microscope.

Cabal looked up from the eyepieces, and his shot-silk eyes searched Leonie's. She saw a new and nameless emotion in them. "Miss Barrow,' he said, and seemed to run out of words. He regrouped. "I don't believe I've ever said this to a woman.' Leonie's heart contracted in pleasure or alarm. She wouldn’t know which to feel until he finished that sentence.

He shook his head, as if it was that easy to evade the effect of the alien pollen. “The pollen is overcoming all my rational objections.'

Leonie swallowed. They were inches apart. He raised his face to her and whispered, “Miss Barrow, would you consider co-authoring a xeneratopalynology paper?"

Leonie’s face lit up with a grin and she heaved a sigh of utter satisfaction. “Yes, Johannes. Here, now, any time or place. Let’s start.”

He turned his head to hide a shy smile, and they happily prepared slides and took notes for the rest of the afternoon.

  


***

“Madam, we only have a single room remaining. With a _single bed_. Do you wish me to book it for you?” The silence was suddenly fraught with possibility. Even the desk clerk leaned forward in anticipation.

Cabal picked up his hat. “Take the room, Miss Barrow. I will meet you in the hotel restaurant at breakfast. Say, six-thirty?"

The door swung shut behind him. Leonie took the single room.

  


***

“Look, chum,’ said the Swindon-born Satanist. “Either you and the young lady can get comfortable with each other on that altar, or we’ll have your blood on it. Makes no difference to us.”

“Oh, I choose death. Death, definitely,” said Leonie.

“Agreed,” said Cabal emphatically.

Leonie drew the Browning from her slim, sparkling handbag and shot a convenient Satanist in the neck. The arterial spray splashed the altar as his legs folded beneath him.

The leader started to protest but thought better of it as Leonie turned the gun on him. He shrugged and raised his hands. “Cheers,’ he said. “I suppose that gets the job done."

  


***

The young couple froze. They had been walking down the street together, arguing, when something arrested the attention of each. He dropped a gladstone bag. She dropped an umbrella. Each performed the same peculiar series of actions: they grabbed a spot on their forearms; they tore back coat cuffs and popped buttons off sleeves, clawing back the fabric to examine the place where the undeniable truth pulsed; two matching marks, now throbbing lightly in rhythm with the other’s heartbeat. The marks looked a little like ducklings.

The man and woman looked up slowly, afraid to see the truth: that their companion’s actions had mirrored theirs. Soulmates. Fated.

"Oh, for crying out loud,' said Leonie. “Well, I’ll move to Land’s End."

“John o’Groats for me, then,” said Cabal. “Or perhaps Paraguay.” With a last exasperated look, they started in opposite directions. Cabal was muttering about Faraday cages.

  


***

“I don’t understand the reason for this imposture,’ said Cabal. “It’s not as if a single woman would be stoned to death. You could claim to be a widow. We could be strangers. Why do we have to pretend to be married?"

“Shut up,’ said Leonie. “Do you know how impossible it is to maneuver us into intimate situations? It’s like herding cats. Ailurophobic cats. The author is at her wits' end, so just shut up for five consecutive minutes. And take my arm like it isn’t radioactive; I think the poor thing is going to cry."

“Fine,’ spat Cabal, yanking her arm through his. ‘But you can damned well bandage yourself if you get hurt. This is the ragged, bleeding edge of my patience with her."

“Shut up. You’ll drive her over to the Sherlock fandom. Now look uxorious.”

  


***

They had been locked in the shipping container for hours. They had talked, argued, fought, ignored each other, and made up, so they were running out of ideas of what to do next. They sat on the only unpacked piece of furniture in the room, a loveseat with plush cushions and swinging fringe. They had been sitting on it for three hours, with breaks for angry pacing.

Cabal sighed harshly, stood, and went to a stack of boxes. Perhaps he could find something that would get them out of the shipping container before morning, when they would either be discovered or mailed to Jutland. A minute later, Leonie picked a different stack of boxes and unclasped her penknife.

A box of pink pillar candles was her first find. She lit an armful to supplement the dim illumination from above.

Cabal turned up a package of artificial silk rose petals. What could they be for, he thought? They were meant to be decorative, he supposed. People wasted their money on such trash. Next he tried a bundle wrapped in brown paper and secured with twine. It contained short lengths of soft rope.

Leonie's box jingled. Upon inspection, it held a dozen pairs of flimsy handcuffs. She turned to Cabal with a laugh that froze on her lips when she saw him standing in a drift of rose petals, looking perplexed by a silky black rope. At his feet, she noticed, there were two small kegs of cocoa butter.

Cabal looked up and noticed the handcuff still dangling from her finger. "What a random assortment." He shrugged, put the ropes down, and started on another box. The candles were definitely shedding a soft rose scent through the room.

“Yes. Ha ha. Random. Very. Isn't it odd?’ She shut her box. "Well, that was exciting. I think I'm done with exploring for now, Cabal. Why don't you tell me that thing about the theory of humours I didn't have time to hear last month."

Something caught Cabal's attention, and he perked up. “There are books back here.” Cabal brought out a small crate. Now this, he thought, was promising. He worked at prying up the lid.

Leonie sighed and sat down on the loveseat. They might as well get this over with. “Oh, really. What are they about?”

Cabal took the first one out and opened the cover. There was a pause, and he shut it again with distinct opprobrium. He put that book at the back of the crate and took up another. And another, which he put back so quickly he almost scuffed the cover. He looked a little pale. “They are not of particular interest.”

Since he was busy looking anywhere but at Leonie, his eye fell on the ropes, candles, handcuffs, rose petals, and kegs of cocoa butter marked “not food grade; do not consume.” The scent of roses permeated the crowded space. His eyes widened with sudden realization. His hands loosened on the unexamined volume in his hands, which proved to be a folio of unbound prints. They cascaded all over the floor.

Cabal and Leonie spent an excruciating minute picking each one up and putting them back in the folio while pretending not to look at them. Cabal had found and ignored many tiresome pornographic volumes in his rummagings through the libraries of the rich and depraved, and he had never seen the point, really. It had to be said he hadn’t seen anything quite like these. And the people involved did seem to be enjoying themselves. The crate repacked, Cabal hammered its lid back into place. He stood and cast about for something safe to do in this erotic hellhole.

Cabal's hunted look suggested he was just short of sitting on the crate, as if the books might escape and brandish their nouns and adjectives all over the room. Leonie took pity on him. “So. Surely there must be something, ah, practical in all this. Something that will help us escape."

"Yes. There must be something." And to avoid meeting each other's eyes as much as anything, they continued the search.

Leonie turned up a case of cognac. She was tempted, but it didn’t seem like the best possible idea. Also, a box of… assorted items. Very assorted. Best not to trouble Cabal with them. The hunt dragged on. They found lingerie and lubricants, massage oil and manacles, contraceptives and corsets, aphrodisiacs and angle brackets. Leonie's embarrassment faded, displaced by rising amusement.

She turned to find Cabal holding up a sort of swing arrangement by a cord. His brows were furrowed in confusion. When he saw her looking over, he dropped it onto the floor and kicked it away as if it was a giant malign insect. She suppressed a smile. “Look, I’m getting tired. Maybe that big crate over there has a chaise or a cot or something.” Cabal glanced back at the cosy velvet loveseat (soft and luxurious, just big enough for two), and nodded.

It took the two of them to unpack the item, which had been crated, padded, bundled, and wrapped in twine. When they pulled the final swathings away, they found a lounge chair. A substantial, broad, well-padded one that looked like it might easily hold two affectionate people. The structure of the chair rested on a base of enamelled metal. Leonie frowned at something outside Cabal's range of sight. “Hang on a second.” She ducked down and when she reappeared, her lip was twitching. She savoured the moment.

She raised a finger to command his attention. She bent down again, and flipped a switch in the chair’s side. It began to vibrate. Noisily and obscenely, but not wholly rhythmically: like a hippopotamus trying to shimmy and flick a fly off its flank at the same time. And it… heaved.

Cabal took a staggering step back, unable to move his eyes from the object. He did not blink when confronted with devils, deep ones, or dance instructors, but this unmanned him.

Leonie gasped and laughed. "Oh, Cabal, your face!" She laughed until her eyes teared. She clutched the side of the crate and gave herself over to the delicious sight of Johannes Cabal, necromancer, recoiling from the offspring of a dentist’s chair and a recliner. She was almost sobbing. His face was flushed with insulted pride, and it only made it funnier. “You look like someone propositioned you with a vegetable. I don’t regret it. I won’t ever,” she gasped around her guffaws. Cabal swore and straightened from the slight fighting crouch he had been startled into. Her stomach ached with laughing. She bent down and turned the buzzing, juddering heap off. “So. It looks very comfortable. Would you like to take a nap?”

Cabal’s response was unprintable. “No, really, think about it. You can't stretch out on the loveseat, and this is a fairly normal reclining chair, as long as you stay away from the switches."

“Switches, plural?” He didn’t want to know. He did not.

Leonie nodded. She tried to keep the grin from leaking out. “There is more than one setting. And it seems to be, um, articulated." He took another step back, as if he thought there might be a search and seizure setting. "Fine. Enjoy the loveseat. But let me know if you want to switch." And there was a giggle, and something that might have been "or share."

Back straight, disapproval and offence emanating from him in waves (waves that were, in fact, visible to some species), Cabal ceded the field. He retreated to the velvet loveseat for a chaste but restless night. Leonie snored peacefully in the padded obscenity.

  



End file.
